Low Intensity Isometric Contractions With Or Without Blood Flow Restriction Do Not Lower Blood Pressure
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Low intensity handgrip exercise is recommended as a method of reducing blood pressure. Blood flow restricted exercise (BFR) also employs low intensities and has produced greater adaptations compared to the same exercise without BFR. Therefore, it is possible that the application of BFR may result in greater reductions in blood pressure. PURPOSE: To examine if low intensity isometric handgrip training with BFR improves resting blood pressure compared to exercise without BFR. METHODS: 179 participants (18-35 yrs) were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The control group (CON, n = 44) only completed the two testing sessions. The training groups completed one of the following conditions: 1) 4 sets of a two-minute contraction at 30% maximal voluntary contraction with one minute of rest (LI, n = 47); 2) 4 sets of a two-minute contraction at 30% maximal voluntary contraction with one minute of rest with a 12 cm cuff inflated to 50% arterial occlusion pressure (LI + BFR, n = 41); or 3) 4 maximal contractions lasting 5 seconds separated by one minute of rest (MAX, n = 47). The training protocol lasted 6 weeks (18 sessions). A Bayesian ANCOVA was used to detect changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and reactive hyperemia (assessed as peak blood flow and area under the curve (AUC)). Pre-values of blood pressure and reactive hyperemia were used as covariates and data were presented as means (SD). RESULTS: There was no evidence that handgrip exercise changed SBP (BF10: 0.066), DBP (BF10: 0.057), peak reactive hyperemia (BF10: 0.044) or AUC (BF10: 0.074) of the trained forearm. Pre-post change scores for SBP were 1.1 (6.7), 0.7 (5.8), -0.4 (6.5), and -0.9 (6.3) mmHg for CON, LI, LI + BFR, and MAX, respectively. DBP change scores were 1.5 (6.6), 1.5 (7), -0.7 (5.9), and 0.3 (6.3) mmHg for CON, LI, LI + BFR, and MAX, respectively. The change in peak blood flow was 0.59 (3.2), 0.59 (3.5), 0.76 (3.2), and 0.98 (3.5) ml·min-1·100 ml-1 for CON, LI, LI + BFR, and MAX, respectively. Changes in reactive hyperemia as AUC was 2.9 (16), 5.6 (11), 3.3 (15), and 6 (13) AUC for CON, LI, LI + BFR, and MAX, respectively. CONCLUSION: Isometric handgrip exercise with or without BFR did not lower blood pressure or improve reactive hyperemia. Higher pressures may be needed for vascular remodeling but more work on this topic is needed.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".